Aspasius (Ancient Greek: Ἀσπάσιος) of Tyre was rhetorician and historian of Ancient Greece. According to the 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia called the Suda, he wrote a history of Epirus and of things remarkable in that country (called On Tyre and its Citizens), in twenty books, as well as theoretical works on rhetoric (called On the Art of Rhetoric), and some others.
Some fragments of his work are contained within Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Müller's Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum.
The classical scholar Malcolm Heath has suggested that this Aspasius was a pupil of the second century sophist Apsines of Gadara, and was the actual author of the work Art of Rhetoric that has traditionally been ascribed to Apsines (which would offer some explanation for the several third-person references to Apsines that are present in that book).
The time in which he lived is uncertain. Scholars believe it is likely he lived in the second century CE. He may be the same person as Aspasius of Byblos.
References
- Comp. Eudoc. p. 66
- Suda, s.v. Ἀσπάσιος
- ^ Bowie, E.L. (1974). "Greeks and their past in the second Sophistic". In Finley, M.I. (ed.). Studies in Ancient Society. Routledge Revivals. Taylor & Francis. pp. 187–188. ISBN 9781136505645.
- Haagsma, M. (2021). The Impact of Classical Greece on European and National Identities. Brill Publishing. p. 189. ISBN 9789004502277.
- ^ Heath, Malcolm (2004). Menander: A Rhetor in Context. Oxford University Press. pp. 56–60. ISBN 9780199259205.
- Katos, Demetrios S. (2011). Palladius of Helenopolis: The Origenist Advocate. Oxford University Press. p. 47. ISBN 9780191619632.
- Hermogenes (2005). Kennedy, George Alexander (ed.). Invention and Method: Two Rhetorical Treatises from the Hermogenic Corpus. Translated by Kennedy, George Alexander. Society of Biblical Literature. pp. xv. ISBN 9781589831216.
- Guest, William (2023). Greek Declamation and the Roman Empire. Cambridge University Press. p. 191. ISBN 9781009297165.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Schmitz, Leonhard (1870). "Aspasius (4)". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. p. 387.